As the debate about in or out gets into its stride, we shall hear a lot about sovereignty from the Leave campaign. There are some points to be made here. The whole idea of a Union is that when its laws are agreed by all its members, all of them must abide by them and Union law has to have primacy over national law of member countries, otherwise there would be chaos. It would not be a Union. It would be a Confederation. It was on this issue that America had its Civil War. So it is an issue which can engage the very hearts of all who believe one way or the other.
Cameron is hinting that he is proposing to introduce in parliament a new law which will declare that in the final analysis the UK parliament is Sovereign over EU law. Several eminent lawyers have appeared on the media to explain that this is impossible without breaching the various EU treaties we have signed. So even if passed it would have no effect. Other countries in the EU do not have this difficulty because all of them have written constitutions. It is accepted that a country should not be obliged to do something in violation of its own constitution, unless its voters have approved an amendment to their arrangements in a referendum to permit it. This is how the EU Constitution bit the dust. Some countries, led by France voted No.
The problem for Britain is that it has no constitution in the sense of a codified document. Parliament is the constitution in a state of permanent evolution.This poses a problem for modern democracy upon which the European Union is founded. In Britain the constitution is owned and controlled by the government. In a true democracy it is owned and controlled by the people and lays down the rules under which they must be governed. Being in the EU offers the British people a layer of protection against bad and exploitative government which otherwise they do not have. If they vote to leave they need to get themselves a codified written constitution, approved by the people ASAP.